The format’s casual: I’ll lead with a topic to kick off some conversation, but the overall vibe is talk about live as a group… Workflows, Questions, Workarounds / Hacks / Ways to do things easier in Live that aren’t in the manual, etc…

I’m down brother but looks like zoom has a 40 min time limit before needing a paid plan. I cannot personally do anymore paid plans at the moment. is there an alternative to zoom that’s free ? like google meet-ups or equivalent ?

@sight I wasn’t aware of that either. Thanks for catching that! Still very new to Zoom, and being a new platform a few hiccups are inevitable…We’ll look into it and let you know what kind of workaround we figure out ASAP. However we wind up having to deliver it it’ll be free for sure…

Hey @sight, The 40 minute limit is only if the host of a webinar is using a free account. We’re not using a free account so there’s no cost, and no cap on time attendees can stay…
You’re all good if you wanted to go.

If I register as an attendee all works well over here… Any chance you can paste the link you found?

right on. can’t attend today cause of a health appointment but hopefully next time. have a great meet-up guys. oh and I bet you’re all excited for Live 10. I am. and hopefully they’ve added improved routing functionality. I had started a mixing project in ableton recently and after two days I had to start all over in Logic due to Ableton’s wonky lack of routing capability. minimal stuff is ok but try using some of MMW advanced routing and you come up short. Logic handles it fine. so I’m still for composing in ableton and mixing in Logic. at least until ableton is on equal par with the routing : )

FYI that’s the point of the user group… Go over features Live has that let you achieve just about anything in Danny’s classes. Live does things differently, but you can do all kinds of tricky routing, some of which I prefer to Logic… Unfortunately the only thing Live doesn’t have is VCA faders… Although I’d imagine these could be made using Max For Live and then saved to the deault template… Just food for thought…

Anyway hope to see you on next week and you’re doing well otherwise…
Cheers

The user group happens once a week through January: Tuesdays 4-5, EST (NY/Boston time zone)
(For now it’s only this month. If it’s something that can happen periodically I’ll update the thread…)

I’ll post a link for each week’s group. (I’ll announce each week as a thread topic.)

It’s live, (no pun intended ) not archived.
(For the moment at least… If it can be made available to people who missed it at some point I’ll announce it here.)

The format’s casual: I’ll most likely lead with a topic to kick off some conversation, but the overall vibe is talk about live as a group… (Ableton workflows, toss out questions, discuss where Live shines or falls down, etc… )

hey justinc. wanna get your input on live’s chronic crashing issues. I’ve been composing in Live for about 8 years now and its always been buggy. my main gripe with crashleton is that the coding is not third party vst friendly. I am running Live on a maxed out macbook pro. always have used maxed out macs but to no avail it still crashes all the time. today I spent a few hours building a new tune and then it crashes and loses it all. I tried to have ableton recover the file which according to the live admins can be done from the crash files. ran all of them but live did not save it. fuck me man, I’m fed up with it. 8 years and since version 6 they still can’t iron out the problems. they keep designing toys for live performers and gear all the upgrades towards live performance and leave the production fixes lagging in the background. I want to upgrade to 10 but unless they’ve done some serious work, its the same old bs. what are your experiences ? I know Im venting but man seriously…

Hey @sight I actually don’t see Live crash any more frequently than Logic or Studio One. (Studio One’s the least stable for me. Significantly more than Live or Logic. I’ve actually stopped using Studio One because the last few versions were really crashy for me and it was becoming a headache.) I find that when Live does crash on me it’s usually when I’m pushing the CPU to its limits or running tons of virtual instruments.

You’re obviously having a different experience though…I use AU’s in all DAWs, (no reason other than its specs being optimized for macOS… Still depends on the developer though. They can deviate from the AU spec… VST’s no different though.)
Maybe see if you see any stability changes using AUs…

There are lots of variables too. Could be plugin related, could be Live related, could be RAM filling up. (Plugins do eat RAM contrary to what some think.) Could be your audio buffer needs to be raised. What’s your audio buffer?

Could even be Live’s database. (Which eats memory and resources). Do you have tons of book marked sample folders in Live’s browser?

Also do you keep everything basically up to date? I find that if I keep things up to date. (barring the OS, I’m usually 1 or 2 behind with the OS…) things generally run smoothly…
What version of Live are you running? And what are your machines specs?

And you don’t get a prompt that 'Live quit unexpectedly do you reopen the last project" (or something to that effect…)? It’s really rare I don’t get that prompt if Live does crash. Restoring usually works fine, after which I immediately save as with a new version number.

One last thing, do you freeze at all? I find no matter what DAW your in there’s a point where you have to freeze or bounce in place. (I actually freeze/flatten regularly. Keeps the project running smooth and gives me a whole new set of inserts to mess with once flattened. I also resample a lot for the same reason.)

This is maxed out for this MBP. I’ve had PC’s, PowMac G5’s, maxed IMACS, and a handful of MBP’s through the years. For sure all of them struggle with large track counts and many VST/AU’s but Ableton is always the weak factor no matter the machine. I use alot of plugins in my productions and my track counts are usually between 35 and 50 although as of recent I’m working on scaling back.

I use AU’s in Live most of the time but sometimes I opt for VST’s because they work better. In fact some AU’s are missing some of their functionality in Live (Waves SSL Comp broken VU meter for instance and wonky random missing preset lists on other AU’s, even though they are installed in the right folder). I monitor my RAM quite often and clear RAM caches before every session. My audio buffer is usually set to 512 or more right from the start because although Live gives the option of a low 32 samples buffer rate, that won’t really work for anything I do (and is comical to me). Maybe podcasts or talk-over dubs on 1 file lol.

Live’s database. Hmmm, that is interesting. That should only matter if accessing the database during playback. Otherwise that’s funny coding. I’ll do some reading on it though. I’m pretty much there with you on current updates. I’m running Live 9.7.5

So I normally do get the crash/recovery prompt but it’s not fullproof. It will just restore the file sometimes with half the project data missing. This is the most frustrating part of working with Live. It’s inherent random bugginess and its been existent in every version of Live since 6 , no matter the machine.

Yeah I do freeze everything (and resample alot) but sometimes if I’m in creative mode I’m just rolling and forgetting to save or freeze. That’s a big beef I have with Live too. Other DAW’s now will prompt you before a crash (Logic X, Bitwig are 2) pre-empting a loss of data. This would not be difficult to code into Live and honestly it’s just because they continue to put all development into it as a performance machine. I know it was designed by DJ’s for performance in the beginning, but it has grown into much more than that. I feel seriously neglected as a producer when every single update and version come out and the same production issues are present. I would give Bitwig a try but I’ve been over taking the time and setback of learning yet another DAW for awhile now unless absolutely necessary.

Well after proofreading my post here I’ve decided to write Ableton myself with all my gripes lol. It really is an amazing production tool that IMO far surpasses any other DAW in speed and efficiency (when composing and writing), but with that being said, if I continue to experience the same issues with version 10, I’m out. I’ll just learn to be ok with getting my ideas going in Logic. It may not be the fastest but it’s definitely the most stable.

After sending my crash report to Ableton they were very helpful and were able to recover my project and specify all the issues pertaining to the crash and subsequent loss of data. I wanted to share the support email as I think it will be of interest to other Live users. I’ll omit info that is not pertinent.

Hi there,

thank you for contacting Ableton!

This is Marian assisting you. I am sorry to hear about the trouble you are having with Live!

I have tried to restore your work from the Undo history file contained in the first Crash Report. Please find the result attached.

Here is some information concerning the crashes of Live on your machine:

The latest crash happened in the code of the Arturia plug-in Jupiter 8V2. Please make sure that this plug-in is up to date.

Several other crashes on your machine were happening in the carbon core framework of the system. It seems that this crash is happening in most cases when having Waves plug-ins in the Live template set.

I would therefore recommend to remove the current template set and rebuild it without Waves plug-ins.

It seems that you are currently using Waves plug-ins in the Audio Unit format. Please note that Waves supports the plug-ins in Ableton Live only in the VST format. Running Waves Audio Unit plug-ins in Live might cause a number of different problems. It is therefore recommended to replace all Waves plug-ins in your projects with their VST version.
Please find further information about the Waves host compatibility here: http://www.waves.com/support/tech-specs/supported-hosts

Let me know if that helps!

Best regards,
Marian
Marian Kalus, Senior Technical Support Agent

It has always been my experience that Ableton doesn’t play well with third party plugins and again this is shown to be correct. Note the Waves AU issues and the Arturia issues (mine is up to date). I don’t run cracks either but pay for all my plugins so there’s no issues there. I’ve decided to write Ableton and continue to try to be of service in helping them to iron out some of the many issues Live continues to carry through all the versions. Maybe they’ll even give me a job somewhere along the way lol.

I don’t use Waves unfortunately. I know that their AUs have some issues in Live though…
Interesting though that they show AU supported for only Apple software and DP, nothing else. Not even Studio One…

Still sorry to hear. Nothing more frustrating then buying software and discovering issues after you’ve already shelled out the cash.

I hear you though. Live is far from perfect, Logic has its edge in many ways…
Live does have a lot of workflow advantages for writing and sound design though… Even with its quirks its still the quickest DAW I’ve found for the production phase…

Not surprised with the crashes being plugin related though. See this across all DAWs. Studio One has a few plugins its 86d on me… You’d think VST and AU would perform the same when it comes to things like meters but I’ve seen people say the same thing about Waves in Live… The main reason I use AU is that you can copy any user presets to your user library and do everything from the same browser tab… Find it makes working in Live a lot quicker…

Anyway if you make it tomorrow feel free to bring this up… The group’s all about bringing up anything Live related… Something love, or something that drives you up a wall… It’s all fair game… And since no two people work the same way sometimes someone has a really clever workaround that makes things a little less frustrating… Cheers…